


To The Arms That Are Waiting Only For You

by boxparade



Series: All Our Yesterdays: The Codas [6]
Category: My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Afghanistan, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage, Military, Poker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:22:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a point during the night, when the poker game slows and everyone sobers up, where they all start talking. Mostly it’s inconsequential shit, but other times they all get a little homesick and start talking about the States; about the people they’ve left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To The Arms That Are Waiting Only For You

**Author's Note:**

> I JUST KEEP WRITING CODAS! I'M SORRY, OKAY?
> 
>  
> 
> A scene from [All Our Yesterdays](http://archiveofourown.org/works/335810) set late during Spencer's deployment.
> 
>  
> 
> ( I suppose you could read it stand-alone if you really wanted. )

 

“Smith! Yo, Smith!”

Spencer’s head shoots up to figure out who the hell is calling for him. He’d been tying up his boots, lost in his own head, possibly getting a bit sentimental, but he snaps back to reality quick enough when he sees Bryar pounding toward him, a lazy grin on his face.

“What’s up, man?”

“Poker night. You’re late.” Bryar kicks at Spencer’s boot, tied and secure, and Spencer lets himself get hauled up off the bed so they can make their way through the darkness, to the back room—it’s really more of a tent—where they have late-night poker whenever they can manage. It’s fucking freezing outside—apparently sand doesn’t hold all that much heat—but it’s a short sprint and then the sides of the tent manage to hold in most of the warmth.

“Smith, you’re late!”

“What the fuck?”

Spencer grins and whacks Toro on the arm before he takes his seat to get dealt a hand. Toro is a flyboy, and all the Marines give him shit about it, but they still let him hang with them because the other zoomies are dicks and don’t really like having Toro around.

“You fuckers starting without me again?” Spencer asks sharp, and they proceed smoothly into their first round of poker, betting whatever they have in their bags or pockets. In Iero’s case, that tends to be candy bars and bags of chips from the care packages he still gets from his mother, because he’s a tiny rookie that hasn’t been away long enough to be forgotten, like the rest of them. Spencer wonders, some nights, if Brendon remembers who he is. If the kids…

“Fuckkkkk, that’s my favorite lighter, man!”

“Well, it’s my favorite lighter now,” Bryar grins, flicks open the cap, and then pulls a cigar from god-knows-where and lights it. Spencer rolls his eyes, because Bryar is known for getting cigars in even the most backwoods sand pits they visit, and he always smokes out the new recruits from the barracks.

By the end of the third round, Spencer’s lost a couple of coins with writing on it that none of them can read, a pair of lithium batteries, one expired condom, and his nice pair of aviators. He’s also gained a still-sharp razor, a pack of chewing gum, some sort of knife that none of them are allowed to have, and an old leather wallet. The last is his biggest win, because it’s beat-up but it’s still holding together, and ever since he almost lost the pictures he has of Bren and the kids when they had to get up and go before the whole place blew up, he’s been looking for something small to carry them around in.

The game has dwindled to about half the original players, with Bryar still taunting Toro about his lighter, and Iero boasting about all the T&A he got when he was stationed back in some tropical paradise of a base to two wide-eyed kids both named Alex. They seem to lack last names. Spencer lets himself grin at his winning, and leans back in his chair, kicking his boots up on the abandoned table and pulling out the pictures of Bren and the kids to stow them in his new wallet-thing.

There’s a point during the night, when the game slows and everyone sobers up, where sometimes they all start talking. Mostly it’s inconsequential shit—Iero and his conquests, Toro and his girlfriend’s million-and-one cats—but other times they all get a little homesick and start talking about the States, about the people they’ve left behind. Spencer usually tries to stay quiet, because Bren always gets so worried about things like this—at least, he seems to be, in his emails. Spencer can’t be sure.

He doesn’t mean to, but he lingers on the photo of Jake and Emily, from at least two years ago. They’re both in their halloween costumes, Emily as some kind of princess—she was torn between Snow White, Ariel, and Little Red Riding Hood so they mixed them all together—and Jake as a dinosaur. They’re both laughing, and trying to dance like the grown-ups had been “inna teevee, Daddy” and Emily was too young to really keep up, but she tried.

God, he misses his kids. It’s ridiculous, because he’s not the only one over here in this sandy hell hole with kids—some guys have kids they’ve never even met. But it still hurts, and there are a thousand times he wishes he hadn’t felt the need to serve his country, to do something so powerful with his life. And Brendon—well, he tries not to think about Brendon too much. Not when there’s nothing he can do about any of this.

“Hey, Smith!” Bryar calls out, and Spencer looks up. “You good?”

“Yeah,” he says quickly, and tries to shove the photo back into his new wallet. Bryar doesn’t have kids, but he has a younger brother with autism that he loves as fiercely as his own kid, so Spencer thinks he gets it. Before Spencer can do anything, Bryar is up and sitting down on the chair next to him, the flimsy metal creaking beneath his force.

“Your kids?” Bryar asks, quiet, and nods toward the photo that Spencer hasn’t quite managed to get away. Spencer just sighs, nods, and hands the photo to Bryar. It’s not the first time they’ve discussed Spencer’s kids, because he wears his ring—not the one he got when they actually got married, but a cheap version that he won’t hate himself for if he loses—and people get bored and ask questions.

It’s the first time he’s showed anyone this photo. Mostly because too much talk about his kids leads to talk about his “wife” and Spencer doesn’t lie to anyone, but he doesn’t exactly give them full disclosure, either.

“You’re a lucky man, Spencer Smith,” Bryar says out of nowhere, and hands Spencer his photo back. Spencer tucks it into the leather wallet and leaves it clutched in his hand, warm leather soft against his skin.

“Why’s that?” He asks.

“You got yourself two gorgeous kids; a family waiting for you back home. That’s a hell of a lot stronger than anything I got.” Spencer knows the concept—if you have something tying you back to the States, you’re ten times more likely to make it out alive because you have more of a reason not to die. The stronger the tie, the stronger your will to live. Spencer always thought it was kind of bullshit, but, well…anything goes at this point in the game.

“Your brother,” Spencer tries to argue, but Bryar shrugs. “It’s different. He’s got people. He’s got another brother. Your kids only got one dad.”

Spencer tries for a damn solid second not to laugh, but he breaks it immediately, and Brendon is going to kill him, but whatever. The regs are different now, anyway. He’s got nothing to lose, except maybe Bob Bryar’s friendship, which isn’t that tall a price to pay when you stack it up next to Brendon and his kids.

Bryar looks baffled, so Spencer flips open his wallet and tugs out another picture, from just before Spencer shipped out, him standing in his BDUs and Brendon clinging tightly to his side, trying his hardest to smile. He throws the photo down on the table in front of Bryar and nods at it. He can feel his heart fluttering a little more quickly than usual, but it’s just Bryar. Iero and Toro are deeply engrossed in some sort of conversation about Toro’s girlfriend, and the Alexes took off hell knows how long ago.

“What’s this?” Bryar asks, taking the photo between his fingers and squinting at it.

“My husband,” Spencer says, and waits.

Bryar does a double-take at the photo, and then says “Huh,” and smiles. “Hidden depths, Smith.”

Spencer smiles lightly and lets Bryar keep on staring at a slightly-younger version of Brendon, bright-eyed but scared, trying so hard not to look small next to Spencer when he had no idea he was the giant all along.

“Point being, my kids do have another dad.” It kind of saddens him to think about it, but if he died out here, his kids might not even remember him—Jake was five when he shipped out, and Emily was only two. They’d hear stories, see pictures, try to fill in the gaps with falsified memories of Saturday morning emails, but they won’t remember him. His voice, the way he smelled, the kinds of things he liked to do with them.

He doesn’t like to think about it.

“Yeah, but they don’t have another you,” Bryar says pointedly, handing Spencer his photo back. “So don’t go thinking you’re replaceable. Besides, you gotta get back to that damn fine boy of yours.”

Spencer laughs, because god knows Bryar is the most masculine, take-no-prisoners guy they got out here, and he’s calling Spencer’s husband “damn fine” in what sounds like a completely serious tone of voice. “And you gotta get back to your brother,” Spencer adds, because it’s true, and he’s not about to let Bryar go thinking he’s got less reason to live than Spencer. That kind of shit can get you killed, when the time comes.

Bryar takes that particular moment to pull out two cigars—where the hell do all of them come from?—and hands one to Spencer. “To staying alive?” he toasts, holding his cigar up like a damn glass of champagne.

“To staying alive,” Spencer echoes sordidly, and taps his cigar against Bryar’s. Then Bryar flips open the cap on his looted lighter, holds the flame between cupped hands under the broken-off tips of the cigars, and they take their sweet damn time smoking to the pure fucking magic that’ll keep them alive just long enough to make it back Home.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Maroon 5 song "Come Away To The Water" from The Hunger Games Soundtrack. (You should all [listen to it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ7pWATs-rM).)


End file.
